The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office.

Blast-offs and could-have-beens.Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz writes in The Guardian’s film blog talks about the devotion the film inspired. Elsewhere on the site, Danny Leigh wonders what if Star Wars never existed?

Science, defense division. The U.S. Navy has made a significant leap forward in testing offensive lasers. A “solid-state, high-energy laser beam” successfully disabled a small vessel off the coast of California. There’s video!

Gizmodo spotted these Intelligent Monitoring Towers recently installed in Buenos Aires. Their intention is to measure air and noise quality, but is it really that far a jump to consider them collecting moisture on Tatooine? Or at least hanging out in the general vicinity?